Smoke puffs indicating acceleration

Crank Calls

I was not so intrigued by Susan Smith’s reappearance yesterday, neither by today’s cameo by a…younger? Ed Crankshaft. Nope, what set these beady eyes to nitpicking was Ed’s peculiar POV in panel one. That angle and that distance just seem impossible on that narrow bridge. My curiosity compelled me to construct the scene from the opposite perspective:

Weird camera angles aside: so it looks like Batiuk’s gonna play the suicide card again, and for the second time on the same female character, and over the same leading man. Unbelievable. At least he knows better than to have Les come hastening after her to talk her down. Unless he’s about to leap out of Crankshaft’s bus. Speaking of old Ed, if indeed this strip is happening eleven years ago, he really went downhill between June 2011 and this cameo in June 2012!

Excuse Me, Have You Seen the Bridge?

“Several years ago…? Could “several” equal eleven years ago? Because this gal looks a lot like Susan Smith. Her hair and attire even match Susan’s when she said her goodbyes to Les and Westview in late June of ’11.

For anyone who’s just picked up reading Funky Winkerbean (or this blog) within the last decade, here’s a quick recap: Susan Smith was one of Les’ students. Susan quite understandably developed an insane crush on Mr. Moore, and her suicide attempt was thwarted by Les himself. Susan surfaced again in Act II, as the abused girlfriend of Matt Miller (again to be rescued by Sir Les-a-lot); seven years after that she showed up at Westview High as a student teacher. Early in Act III, she returned to the WHS faculty. She was greeted there by school secretary Cayla, who would become her rival over, who else, Les. Susan bestowed on Les an impulsive kiss that led to a small scandal that led to, as we see here, her boxing up her belongings as smug Les looked on. So yeah, I’m guessing that this is the same woman. And given her past, the fact that she’s parked her car on a bridge does not bode well.

A tip of the SoSF fedora to “anita the last vcr” (@saleintothe90s) from whose tumblr I cribbed my knowledge of Susan Smith’s background!

His House Was A Museum, When Boy Lisa Came To See-Um

Link To Today’s

SIGH. It’s still going. Jessica, a born and bred Westviewian, doesn’t understand nerdy collectors? Puh-LEEZE! Not buying that, even for a second. Her husband owns a Flash treadmill, for crying out loud. This is just plain lazy writing, and BatYam should be ashamed of himself. If he had any capacity for that, I mean.

Another robin’s egg blue car. I’m assuming that a container ship full of knock-off Estonian cars washed up on the Ohio shores back in 2002 or so, and everyone grabbed one. And that car would NEVER pass New Jersey’s stringent auto emissions standards, that’s for sure. I mean, no one would notice or even care, but you’d never get a clean inspection sticker driving around in that thing.

So where in God’s name could this arc possibly be going from here? Will Boy Lisa find some local weirdo who repairs cracked coffee mugs, thus preserving John Darling’s (Jessica’s father) legacy forevermore? Will he use the gun to wrest control of Atomik Komix away from the geriatrics? I don’t know, but I do know it’ll be stupid in ways that none of us are capable of accurately forecasting, and that is a 100% certainty.